Computer Programming Languages for Not Yet Techies

By itself, without people with computer careers who know computer programming languages, computer hardware is junk. Very expensive, highly sophisticated electronic junk, but junk. Computers are nothing without computer programming languages.

Computer programmers are responsible for writing the programs that tell computers what to do. The basic idea is simple. That's what computer programming languages really.

What makes computer programming languages so difficult is that, really, no matter how sophisticated, computers themselves are very simple in outlook.

By itself, a computer simply knows whether a given electronic switch in his chip is on or off. Or, as usually shown, a 0 or 1. No matter how complex its actual operations, to a computer the world is very simple, very stark. Things are either on or off, 0 or 1.

computer programming languages are the interface between the deep electronic hardware reality of all computers and us human beings who don't speak in electronic impulses.

computer programming languages are highly precise to translate the programmers' instructions.

A computer language might use the word "delete" as a command to the computer program to wipe something out. The computer reads the word "delete" and translates it to its own assembler language. This breaks down further to the machine language, the 0 or 1, on or off, binary electronic language of the computer's hardware guts.

Then it knows to produce the binary code that changes the output to "delete" whatever we just told it to delete.

Many people still complain that computers are too difficult to use, because they still don't understand spoken, conversation English. The commands to use must still be strictly defined. Unlike human conversation partners who can figure out what you really meant by what you said even though you left out words, the computer goes strictly by what you said, not what you meant. That's the challenge.

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